How to Implement Google Rich Snippets for Reviews and Why It Matters

You’ve seen Rich Snippets in Google’s search results but may not know exactly what they are and how websites are adding them to their search engine results. In this tutorial, we’ll tell you what Rich Snippets are, why they are useful, and one way you can add them to your WordPress powered website.

How to Add Rich Snippets to WordPress
Review Rich Snippet Example

What Are Rich Snippets?

In short, Rich Snippets give users convenient summary information about their search results at a glance. You’ve seen these in Google search results already, but here’s a 50 second video with a great explanation.

Makes sense right? A more usable web experience for all. But what happens when your WordPress powered online business site doesn’t have rich snippets, but you do have a valuable product, event, or recipe that could also benefit from utilizing Rich Snippets? If you’re not using rich snippets for your content, your site may be getting left behind.

Why Do They Matter?

Displaying Rich Snippets along side your website content in search results helps your content to stand out visually from other search results. This helps users to see your content more clearly and makes them more likely to click through to your website rather than a site that does not have this extra summary information.

How to Add Review Type Rich Snippets to Your WordPress Website

Here’s another short Google video explaining the Reviews Rich Snippet markup type. This will give you a good example of what the plugin I’ll be describing below will allow you to do.

Using the Author hReview Plugin to Add Review Rich Snippets to WordPress

Watch our video tutorial on how to use and configure the Author hReview plugin.

Other Types of Google Rich Snippets

There are other types of Rich Snippets you can add to your content, although we haven’t checked if there are other plugins that allow you to add these types to your WordPress site, we’re betting that they exist. And if they don’t, it’s a pretty safe assumption that they will soon.

Events

Recipes

Apps

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